Farsong Blog-o-Matic

Music hasn't been a priority this year. It's been good, but I've discovered a lot more old stuff than new stuff released this year (and a lot of trance and house musics). As per usual, this is a list of the good albums released in this year. Unlike in years previous, there is no ranking. I don't think there are ten, though, but that makes up for the years where there have been like twelve or fifteen.



Fanfarlo — Reservoir
This one has the “Harold T. Wilkins” track.

Röyksopp — Junior
The companion to this, Senior is due out in 2010.

U2 — No Line On The Horizion
Best U2 since Achtung Baby

Franz Ferdinand — Ulysses
Especially disc 2.

Ziggy Stardust Remixed
Bowie remixes with a haunting remix of MGMT's “Kids” that's better than the original.

Fireflies — Butterscotch EP
No, you're probably thinking of Owl City's “Fireflies.” This band is called Fireflies, has no relation to Owl City, and sounds a lot like Polaris.

Jens Lekman — THE SUMMER NEVER ENDS
This is the 49:00 of this year — that is to say, it is both excellent and obscure.


These are not all the new albums I got in 2009. Some of them just weren't amazing. Some simply do not deserve to go on the list. Others were compilation albums. So yeah. And it's not like I can pick any one that's best because they're all different.




And since it's 2009, aka the end of the decade and the start of a new one:
( My favourites of the last 10 years (2000-2009), in which I disagree with Pitchfork a lot )

Finally, since it's the end of the year, I have The List ready. It's changed a little since I posted the beta version, back in October. There has been some shuffling and there are a few new albums present (ergo, others have dropped off, even though they are good). Also, these are not my favourite albums from this year — these are my favourite albums that were released this year. Also, it's really hard to try to organise all these albums, since they're all great and were vying for the top spot, and I'm still over 10.

Someone asked me why I was making a list. I didn't understand the question and only explained it like this: I listen to music like some people play video games.


1) Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
This album sounds like it was recorded from the bottom of the well. It is beautiful and haunting, and the first time I really listened to it was a cold night alone in my tent as it rained in Glacier National Park. NPR loves them, I love them, and I can't count how many people I've recommended this band to. They are amazing and will go far.

2) The Envelopes - Here Comes the Wind
Light and peppy, but crisp and still thoughtful in a silly way I love, this is a band you should listen to and love. They are Swedish and each track is different, but they are all great and very underappreciated.

3) Los Campesinos - Hold On Now, Youngster ... and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
These are actually two separate albums released within one year by the same band (a feat in and of its self, in an age where you wait two years for something new from The Decemberists — let alone two excellent albums), and the latter is an album of all-new tracks, not b-sides. This Welsh band is the reason I have come back to liking indie music once more. They make music that you can move your feet to and still feel good about it. It's okay to dance like a goof if you're enjoying it.

4) Paul Westerberg - 49:00
Exactly 43:55 of music — no tracks or tracklistings — that sounds like a broken radio tuning to successively different channels, jumping into parts of songs. It's a wonderful mix-tape like track that is wonderful in its sincerity. If you have this mix, you're lucky. If not, go find this mix from former The Replacements' frontman.

5) Don't Stop: Recording Tap
A set of never-released recordings from a defunct recording studio in the early 80s, at the end of Disco and the beginning of hip-hop (the kind with thoughtful words and real music). The tracks are a funky, wonderful timecapsule.

6) M83 - Saturdays = Youth

It sounds like the soundtrack to an 80s teen flick that never existed. Throbbing, melodic electronic. It's a carefully controlled static.

7) Audiobytes for Autobots - 2.0
Electro-hip-hop mashup made of other tracks. It seems the second year in a row that I've stuck a mashup in my list. This one is well-made and quite fun. Oh, hey, it's free too.

8) The Fleshtones - Take a Good Look
This album is a sincere, post-indie look at life, ageing, and a world inhabited by a younger generation by a punk band from New York. The songs are lively and peppy without lacking their sincerity and realness.

9) Telekrimen - Resurreción de los Sangre-Zombis del Mas Allá
Psychadellic Mexican space zombie garage surf rock. I got this album because of the awesome cover, and the music doesn't disappoint!

10) Fennesz - Black Sea
I've been getting into ambient music recently. I don't know quite how to describe it, because by its very nature, ambient music is hard to define or focus on. I think it's more described as a sonic soundscape or mood, but without being "tubular bells" sort of stuff. Anyway, this is a really cool bunch of sounds and electronic static. I like it, as I've seem to have this album on repeat in the evenings. So, yes; it eludes description, but I've been listening to it and enjoying it, along with several other albums, but this one sticks out the most.


( A few albums that didn't make The List )

Well, I'm back to using Firefox for daily webbrowsing, at least for now.

Technically, it's not Firefox. Like I normally do, I'm running a build of Firefox's latest "Minefield" development release, compiled and optimised by a third party for Intel Core processors running OSX (I also run a G5 PPC optimised build on my G5 tower). This build can't officially call it "firefox" because it is a third-party build, and cannot use the Firefox icon. This build of 3.0.3 doesn't even use the "Minefield" trunk, though, because the new icon's incredibly ugly, with a fuse tacked onto it, using, instead, the nice globe icon behind that fox. In previous releases, the builds also included aqua form buttons and dialogue boxes^*.

Minefield takes up where Bon Echo left off, which was the trunk that became Firefox 3, and was about where I left off using Firefox on OSX, when I discovered that Safari 3 was significantly faster and nicer.

There are still a few issues that I don't like — the fact that Ctrl+Cmd+D doesn't bring up the dictionary, which has been kicking around for a while^**.

But the biggest things have been cleared up. The browser works well, and with the GrApple themes and the Fission extension, it's virtually indistinguishable from safari at first glance. It's true that it might be a veneer, but the backend of the browser is much improved and is designed well. This doesn't feel like the old, massive browser with umpteen extensions — I have a bunch of extensions loaded^***, and the browser still feels snappy and responsive.

Moreover, some of the things such as the tear-off tabs have been implemented. That's one of the reasons I liked Safari 3 more than Forefox 3.

The memory leak issues are mostly gone, and after using the browser all day, it doesn't feel like I have to restart it. It feels faster and loads pages snappily — faster than Safari does, even on my G5. The load averages are low, and it doesn't consume any more processor than Safari^****.

Anyway, Minefield is a pretty stable release, and when combined with the recent release of Flash 10 that makes Flash more efficient^*****, this should make computers that were feeling a little sluggish, run a little faster.

--
* The official release did not have buttons that matched the OSX UI, which was one of the things that bugged me the most — though, aqua widgets were added to the Firefox trunk in 3.0. Well, they're mostly aqua native widgets; there are a few late anhängers in the form of drop-downs, but are cocoa and aqua for the most part.

** Incidentally, this is also one of the things I hate about Microsoft Office for Mac.

*** Though, I've become more economical in my use of extensions since switching back to Safari, a while ago. I am glad to get back to using some of the weather and bookmark-sync extensions, however, as I can sync the bookmarks between my computers at home and my instance of firefox on Ubuntu in the CS Labs.

**** This is merely an estimate, not a hard figure — I just keep my eyes on the processor load and wattage while using it on battery. I will say that a normal load average, without any flash things running, is about 2.00-3.00W, which allows me to get nearly 4 hours' battery life, with Adium (chat), web browser, Mail, and NetNewsWire (RSS reader). Usually, there are more apps running, too — code and text editors, as well as at least one instance of Terminal.

***** There are significant performance gains over Flash 9 on both OSX and Windows (and I'd guess on Linux as well). Flash performance has always been horrendous, making an 8-core MacPro perform like a bargain-bin computer from three years. Flash 10 makes it somewhat better, and in my experience, I can finally watch High-def videos on my G5 with more than one application running.

Finally, since it's the end of the year, I have The List ready. It's changed a little since I posted the beta version, back in October. There has been some shuffling and there are a few new albums present (ergo, others have dropped off, even though they are good). Also, these are not my favourite albums from this year — these are my favourite albums that were released this year. Also, it's really hard to try to organise all these albums, since they're all great and were vying for the top spot, and I'm still over 10.

Someone asked me why I was making a list. I didn't understand the question and only explained it like this: I listen to music like some people play video games.


1) Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
This album sounds like it was recorded from the bottom of the well. It is beautiful and haunting, and the first time I really listened to it was a cold night alone in my tent as it rained in Glacier National Park. NPR loves them, I love them, and I can't count how many people I've recommended this band to. They are amazing and will go far.

2) The Envelopes - Here Comes the Wind
Light and peppy, but crisp and still thoughtful in a silly way I love, this is a band you should listen to and love. They are Swedish and each track is different, but they are all great and very underappreciated.

3) Los Campesinos - Hold On Now, Youngster ... and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed
These are actually two separate albums released within one year by the same band (a feat in and of its self, in an age where you wait two years for something new from The Decemberists — let alone two excellent albums), and the latter is an album of all-new tracks, not b-sides. This Welsh band is the reason I have come back to liking indie music once more. They make music that you can move your feet to and still feel good about it. It's okay to dance like a goof if you're enjoying it.

4) Paul Westerberg - 49:00
Exactly 43:55 of music — no tracks or tracklistings — that sounds like a broken radio tuning to successively different channels, jumping into parts of songs. It's a wonderful mix-tape like track that is wonderful in its sincerity. If you have this mix, you're lucky. If not, go find this mix from former The Replacements' frontman.

5) Don't Stop: Recording Tap
A set of never-released recordings from a defunct recording studio in the early 80s, at the end of Disco and the beginning of hip-hop (the kind with thoughtful words and real music). The tracks are a funky, wonderful timecapsule.

6) M83 - Saturdays = Youth

It sounds like the soundtrack to an 80s teen flick that never existed. Throbbing, melodic electronic. It's a carefully controlled static.

7) Audiobytes for Autobots - 2.0
Electro-hip-hop mashup made of other tracks. It seems the second year in a row that I've stuck a mashup in my list. This one is well-made and quite fun. Oh, hey, it's free too.

8) The Fleshtones - Take a Good Look
This album is a sincere, post-indie look at life, ageing, and a world inhabited by a younger generation by a punk band from New York. The songs are lively and peppy without lacking their sincerity and realness.

9) Telekrimen - Resurreción de los Sangre-Zombis del Mas Allá
Psychadellic Mexican space zombie garage surf rock. I got this album because of the awesome cover, and the music doesn't disappoint!

10) Fennesz - Black Sea
I've been getting into ambient music recently. I don't know quite how to describe it, because by its very nature, ambient music is hard to define or focus on. I think it's more described as a sonic soundscape or mood, but without being "tubular bells" sort of stuff. Anyway, this is a really cool bunch of sounds and electronic static. I like it, as I've seem to have this album on repeat in the evenings. So, yes; it eludes description, but I've been listening to it and enjoying it, along with several other albums, but this one sticks out the most.


( A few albums that didn't make The List )

This seems to happen every eight-to-twelve months: I compile a list of Mac software I use. Usually this is because a friend has switched to Mac.

We'll start with specs:
Right now I have one G5 PowerPC tower @1.8GHz, with 2Gb of RAM, and a MacBook Core2 Duo @2.0GHz with 1Gb RAM. The former runs Tiger (10.4.11 final) and is named Kirkegaard, and the latter runs Leopard (10.5.2 is the current version, as of this writing) and is named Lobo. I use them both. I have not taken the laptop with me to University yet this quarter, though I probably will.

I also use Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, and Adobe CS3, but there is open-source software to fill the gap. I can't in good conscience recommend The GIMP for image editing, though.


OSX is all well and good, and Leopard has a number of great new features that have replaced old software I used to use (Leopard came with tabbed Terminal and Screen Sharing, so out go iTerm and Chicken of the VNC). But sometimes, the built-in things in Mac OSX don't act in quite the way I want, or there is functionality missing. Ergo, third-party apps. All work on Leopard, based upon my usage. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and if I've missed something or don't list something useful I should, comment! All links go to the developers' pages.


( Software for OSX--now with 120% more snarky commentary )

And that's that software I use in my everyday life on the Mac!

I realised that I had not yet put up my list of top-ten albums for 2007. And were there ever a lot of new things this year! Unfortunately, a great many of the things that were new to my ears were fairly old to others', including the likes of Devo, The Clash, The Talking Heads, The Who, The Scissor Sisters, the New Pornographers, James Kochalka Superstar, and !!!.

Also of note, this is the year I maxed out my old 40 Gb iPod (and acquired a new 160 Gb one).

Since 10 is rather arbitrary, we start here:( There is a list under here )

• Mozilla Firefox Personas:
Of note:

“All changes to the browser chrome are applied instantly, with no need to restart. […] We’ll shortly be releasing an API that will allow developers and designers to submit Personas that are based on Web content, including support for anything that can load in a content window such as HTML, CSS, PNG, JPG, Javascript, SVG and Canvas.”

Some of the available themes are nice, but these could easily become gaudy and ugly. Tha just means real graphic designers will have to make awesome themes.

I will say that Personas look snappy with the GrApple theme.


Also, to-day's Nothing Nice To Say and Achewood are both amazing.

I got home, yesterday afternoon. The first thing I did was mow the lawn. The second, to set up my nice speakers with a rather ancient CD player. A portable one from about 1994. The audio is crisp and fantastic, though I think it's more a function of the speakers than of the player (as a test, I played the same tracks off the iPod and I could hear no discernible difference — though it was probably a 160 Kbps track). Makes me glad that I did order a set of nice headphones.

The third thing I did was to place a new hard drive in a friend's broken iPod.

So, I edited together a little clip of video (from about 35 Minutes of raw footage) for a group presentation for Philosophy. I post it here so people can see some of the stuff I was doing over the course of the last semester. This was the fourth thing I did.




Zestful Gardens is a community-driven organic farm in the Puyallup Valley (within sight of The Mountain—Mt. Ranier for the uninitiated). The farm is worked by Holly and her mother, as well as whatever other help they can get. The farm grows a wealth of different crops, all organic. Also on the farm are chickens, goats to eat Blackberry bushes, and a couple little piggies to eat the invasive quack-grass. The interesting thing is that “organic” is more traditional, and current techniques and practices are synthetic, unnatural, and filled with pesticides.

Last year, we had a drought. This year we already have great releases from three bands that have been already well-established within a month of each other, and a slew of other releases planned. It's a banner year. If last year was a drought, this year is a torrent and a deluge. A rivulet, perhaps? Enough with the water metaphors: I'm thirsty, have to go pee, and teed to take a shower. Regardless, it is begun; we already have contenders for the top-ten of Aught-Seven:


“Dü-dü düm. Where's that from? Where's that from?”I found myself mumbling desperately last night, scrolling through files and comparing the digital ones to the thoughts that remain in my mind. I was listening to the latest album from the Arcade Fire. The fact that, even after hundreds of successive listenings over the past years, their previous album has not worn out is a testament to the Arcade Fire's skill, and the very fact that the album was filled with the utmost pure magics.

And guess what? Their newest album, Neon Bible, recaptures the same magic that they had before — the magic that made me listen to them on an endless repeat on crappy, muddy headphones. It was seriously the album of my senior year.

And somehow this album has lived up to the enormous expectations that were held for it. It's new, it's different, and it's the Arcade Fire doing what they did. I want to listen to all these songs over and again and again (especially tracks like “Black Mirror”) — and I'm fairly certain that these feelings will remain.

And it's not as if the band has been hiding under a rock, either. They've been touring and some members playing in the wonderful Bell Orchestre (likened to Explosions in the Sky, Sigur Ros, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor). They seemed to have picked up the “Wall of Sound” from 2005's wonderful Broken Social Scene, and have added a great pipe-organ to their repertoire (as awesome as if Coldplay had the gumption to play a giant pipe-orgel). Oddly enough, they seemed to have made a journey back in time. On a number of tracks, lead vocals Win Butler seems to sound almost like the vocals from LED Zeppelin in places on tracks two and three (“Keep the Car Running” and the title track, “Neon Bible”) and like Bruce Springs-teen's warbly voice on “(Antichrist Television Blues),” all very good, though it did throw my mind into chaos last night.

There's also a new recording of “No Cars Go” from the old “Us Kids Know” Arcade Fire EP. It's crisper, faster (albeit by some some 15 seconds), cleaner, and filled with sound. There are some really fun flourishes to the music with harmonies and turns, and the addition of a (French) horn. It's an interesting comparison to the older recording. I don't know if I like this remix yet, though. I still have time to decide, though.

And even though it doesn't pop like Architecture in Helsinki (come on, those guys are Australians and are therefore automatically awesome), Neon Bible is not an “older and wiser” album — these kids still have a magical fire, the Arcade Fire.

Okay, that was cheesy and bad and I appoligize, even if it is true. But it's still true that Neon Bible lives up to its expectations in unexpected ways. It's no Funeral, but it's something new and different, infused with the same endearing quality that made us all fall in love with the Arcade Fire the first time around.

— Steve “No-I-Will-Not-Give-a-Numberd-Rating” Johnson goes to college in Tacoma, and is pursuing a major in English Lit. He plays Classical trumpet and nods politely when the Music Majors start talking about “divergant sevenths in triads” even though he has no clue what they mean. He listens to a lot of different types of music (both many different genres as well as a great quantity) and claims to have been to a Decemberists concert once.

Shutdown day
24^th March 2007. Turn off your computer and go do something. You can turn it off for a day. It's not hard, and it saves power. (I'll probably end up drawing things and whatnot). At the very least, throw your machine into sleep to conserve power if and when you're not using it.


Save The Internet
Now with a cool video about Net Neutrality, what it is, and why we want to keep it.



Bldg Blog — Europe's Geological Attics
One of the reasons I love BldgBlog is because of the cool places. This one is at the top of the world — a series of abandoned cablecar stations up in the Alps that are surreal in their bleak emptiness and aloneness, and cantilevered out over the edges of the cliff-like mountains. Beauty!


Paleo-Future
If you like BldgBlog, you'd probably like this one, too, which talks of futures that never were.




Linux, pre-installed on Dells, coming soon
Ubuntu and Gentoo are now kosher.


Barak Obama ’08


Timothy McSweeny Recommends
He knows many things.

Alpha-Shade

I should probably be scolded for not reading this comic before now, only reading through the archive for the first time yesterday. But while it is still fresh in my mind, I write:

Alpha-Shade is a flash-based comic, as in, the website and all its pages are kept in a flash-based archive, and the comic its self is made in Flash—though, oddly enough, the site won't run properly in Firefox on either of my Macs (Opera and Safari are fine). That's the first thing one notices when first coming to the page, and makes the drawings very smooth and crisp, though I notice the method used to achieve a focus blur is actually a slight ghosting of the image outlines, which happens to be exactly the way astigmatism works in my eye. Of course, there is also a low-bandwidth version of the comic, in the form of jpegs, but this detracts from one of the coolest things about the comic: the ability to zoom and look at small details of the pages.

And this is a very attractive thing because the art and the detail that is put into each panel almost begs the reader to examine the pages more closely. In many cases, there are details hidden in scattered pages and corners of rooms—details only testifying to the thoroughness of the artist.

This level of thoroughness is carried throughout the pages of Alpha-Shade, shown in the detail of the airships, weapons, and other vehicles, including the flyers—great blue birds-of-prey carrying agile riders; these happen to be my favourite. Every character is different and instantly recognisable, though the style of drawing makes the characters look rather young. The scenes that are created are fantastic, packed with steam-powered airships and all kinds of detailed weaponry creating a wonderful feeling of knowing and being part of the world. A steampunk world—initially what attracted me to the story.

But yet, this also seems to be one of Alpha-Shade's drawbacks—it seems to be continually focused on all these explosions, as if it is only retains excitement through these sorts of things. It feels as if the story is sometimes nothing but one unexplained explosion after another, and this detracts from the slower reasoning why and how.

And there is certainly a story there—one filled with war and secret alliances between empires, betrayal, robbery, explosions, and, if I had to guess, Zeppelins. And it's a hell of a story. There is only one problem: suspense. The entire first chapter definitely sets up the world, but it is seemingly left behind in the next two chapters, though many of the characters have somehow come from this steampunk world to the Earth as we know it. It builds suspense, yes, but this can be a problem, too—the comic is only up-dated once a week, and with as in-depth a story as this, the comic could go on for a long time, and there are a number of things that could be explained further, though this could potentially happen later in the story.

The biggest problem is that nothing feels resolved—it feels as if there have been big broad chapters setting things up, but each of these seems to leave a reader with more questions than answers—“What happened to that character?” “What is the reason for this event or character?” I do think that most of these will be answered in time, but it leads me to wonder whether a serialised format is the best for this story. Transmetropolitain by Warren Ellis was a somewhat-serialised comic, consisting of three chapters that were first released as issues, and then as individual volumes—somewhere in the neighbourhood of ten such volumes by the end of the series. Each set of three had its own mini-arcs that would be contained within each chapter, resolving at the end, but with arcs that would span all three chapters, finally being resolved at the end of the volume—a very clean format. I do wonder if Alpha-Shade could be better-served by a form like that, or whether it would work well in a large book made up of many chapters.


Of course, this is not to say that Alpha-Shade is bad, because it's not—it's excellent, and a great amount of work goes into each page. The art is crisp and clean and highly-detailed. The worlds that the story is set in are amazingly detailed, and filled with dry humour (such as a pizza parlour called “William Theodore Franklin Pizza” or “WTF” for short). the comic is filled with colour and great and original drawing, but I can't help but feel that the pacing is slightly off.

Alpha-Shade is a fun comic set partially in a steampunk universe with an interesting story—and it doesn't update nearly as often as I would like.

As per usual, Spokane (the place I lived for most of my life, though for which I express no hometown sentiments) did something stupid.

This time, it's in relation to Zune, and how at CompUSA, it came with a free $15 iTunes gift certificate.


I actually saw some girl walking around with one of the brown Zunes, yesterday. I could hardly contain my laughter.

I actually took the time to mess around with the Zune recently. I can condense the review into two points:

1) Holding and operating the Zune with one hand is not ergonomic; it made my thumb hurt. The Zune is a two-handed affair, and while not hard to use, it is not made for one-handed use.

2) The interface, while clean and neat, angered me. All the menu titles were in lower-case—that is, there are no capital letters at the beginning of the words. Both as an English major and a Grammar Stickler, I despise that choice. As a graphic designer, I also find things wrong with this scheme as well—namely that, without capitals or other forms of punctuation and separation, the menus flow together into one long, incomprehensible sentence; the individual items in the list become at once harder to discern as they are part of a jumble of words.

The decision to use no capitals in the menus was obviously part of a brilliant plan to make the Zune seem “hip,” “cool,” and “with it”; it only serves to show that Microsoft is out of it—trying to appeal to the teenyboppers and their unintelligible SMS abbreviations (I don't think the product name has a capital letter in it, either). Fashion is no excuse to abandon the conventions of language—this only results in miscommunication and confusion in understanding of ideas.

Words are cool, as is being able to understand other people. Taking the vowels out of words, removing the capitals, and castrating language is not. Unfortunately, though, English-speaking people seem to not understand this.

Germans, however, do. The are very protective of their logical, grammatically-sound language of which the principles of construction are clear (the German word for sentence—“Satz”—is the same word as for a mathematical equation); they are offended when non-native-speakers butcher the grammar. Like many things in German (especially humour), the German language is a Science and an Art for the German People. Specifically, this is one of the reasons that German is a much better language than English.


edit: Another reason that Germany is cooler than America: Industrial art lamps. Form where else but Berlin!
[via the Gizmodo]

This year there have not been a wealth of amazing new albums out. Two-thousand-six has not been a year with a lot of new releases that I’ve been able to sink my teeth into. Admittedly, I’ve listened to a lot more old stuff—both stuff I’ve had for a while, and things that are old, but are new to me, ranging from re-discovering the Beatles, to finding Daft Punk. It’s also been a year heavily punctuated by a number of great singles—both in the dance scene, and singles from up-coming albums—a thing I would like to try to mourn as the album-as-art-form is one of my favourite things.

But that’s just it. Bands have spent this year touring and working on new material to release next year. Sure, there are such things as the new Menomena album, Friend and Foe, which has been leaked, but it is not actually set to release until January of ought-seven. Yes, there have been a few anticipated albums from both the Flaming Lips, their latest being At War With The Mystics, and from The Decemberists. Apart from that, there haven’t been a great number of new must-have albums that I have heard. Yes, there is a new Barenaked Ladies album out, but I haven’t heard it yet, so I can’t include that.

The same thing goes for video games, too. I can probably count on one hand the amazing releases this year (admittedly, I can count to thirty-one on one hand, but this is beside the point). There are a number of big game releases slated for ‘07.

Two-thousand-six was a year of old material, found. In some ways, it belies a desire for the familiar. It was also a great year for live performances—if you wanted to see your band playing, you could go and see them; there were a great number of shows. There are a half-dozen bands gearing up to release new content this next year, including the much anticipated new album from The Arcade Fire, as well as Menomena and many others.

That said, here’s what I’ve been really digging this year, a great number being things I missed last year and found this year.

1) Daft Punk — Discovery
2) Sigur Ros — Takk …
3) Johann Johannsson — IBM 1401: A User’s Manual
4) The Beatles — Abby Road
5) Argo — Jet Packs for Everyone
6) The Belle Orchestre — Recording a Tape the Colour of Light
7) Caribou — The Milk of Human Kindness
8) The Decemberists — The Crane Wife
9) The Youngblood Brass — Center:Level:Roar
10) The Flaming Lips — At War With the Mystics
11) Menomena — I Am The Fun Blame Monster
12) Spoon — Gimme Fiction


Albums are a lot like friends: one can never have too many …

(The second clause of that sentence could be completed in a variety of ways.)


This is a wrap-up of the year; I don't anticipate any big new releases in the last week. I do still have to check out that BNL album, though.

I have found another bad User Interface: Vince’s alarm clock. Now, an alarm clock is on of the simplest things that you’ll use in your every-day life, right? At least, it should be easy to use so once can function it in a literal fog of sleep. The first alarm clocks were simple mechanical devices, usually with a knob for winding, a knob to set the time, a knob to set the alarm, and a switch to activate the ringer. It was a simple matter of pressing the switch to disengage the mechanical ringer. Then clocks got simpler when electricity was added, usually coming with three things: a knob or dial to set the time, another to set the alarm, and a final one to turn the alarm on or off. A few years later, the snooze button was added to the chagrin of employers everywhere.

However, with the advent of the microcomputer and computer chips in everything from your wrist-watch to your automobile to eve your coffee carafe, alarm clocks went digital. The displays were electronic 7-panel LED-illuminated things. Alarm clocks, once a simple thing, started sprouting buttons all over the place. A button to turn something on, another to turn something else off, one to turn the radio on and off, and another to do something else entirely. This was not bad, but oftentimes the buttons were the same size and shape, and in a sleepy delirium, one could end up pressing the “snooze” button and getting an unwelcome surprise when one expected the device to be off.


Which brings me to my point: My roommate’s alarm clock. It’s a very poorly designed alarm clock. It is so poorly designed that I cannot figure it out. I’m not daft, and am actually quite handy with electronics—so when I say that I can’t figure the alarm clock out, take this to heart: the average person will become frustrated with it.

My roommate’s alarm clock is a good CD player, and manages this task with no problem. The same goes for the radio, which it also does quite well. However, when it comes to the alarm function, I can’t, for the life of me, figure it out. Admittedly, the only time I need to figure it out is when my roommate is gone, and the alarm has been left on.

On these [incidental] mornings, I have to get over to the alarm clock (a feat of daring, trying to get to Vince’s part of the room). By this time I just want the damn thing off, and try as I might, I don’t know what button to press. Of course, I end up pressing the snooze button, and the thing comes back on later. The simplest way to turn the thing off is to simply unplug it. So I do that. I don’t know how to turn the thing off!

And this is bad design! I shouldn’t need a manual to operate an alarm clock! This is one of the simplest and most-universal things that one can have. But when these digital devices are being created, engineers don’t give a thought to the design of the devices—they simply want function. But function is almost-useless when it is poorly executed.

This is evidenced by poor design in the fact that “off” buttons are usually small to non-existent (also, as evidenced by the ideological difference between Windows and Mac, the former which has functions, the latter which executes these functions with great design that has usability in mind). For some reason, engineers seem to think that they can combine the function of the off button into that of some of the other buttons. In good design, an off button is big, feels different from the other buttons, and is set off on another accessible part of the device. This clearly labels the button as the “off” button, and ensures that it will not be confused or pushed accidentally.

I’m not claming that I have found and purchased the best alarm clock. I have not by any means. Mine is, however, somewhat better if only for that fact that the “off” button is somewhat recessed and has a large pointy bump in the middle, and is set off from the other buttons. Unfortunately, the button also doubles as the radio on-off button, but regardless, this buttons will turn off the alarm that is ringing or the radio that is buzzing. It does its job, and I don’t have to look up how to use it.


Seriously, who wants to read a manual for their alarm clock? I rest my case.

Twelve seconds. That's how long it takes. I'm not sure what takes twelve seconds, but something obviously does.

First, Something Awful has a terribly awesome rant (not a rant of anger, but a rant more in the nature and context of slowly drowning in a vat of acidic gelatin) about that which we all know and love: Bric-a-brac.

The stuff is clutter; useless and pointless. Plus, it's hilarious; comedy gold. I couldn't make up shit this crazy.

So, obviously, I start looking at some of the things just to see how bad they are. Let's take stock, shall we?



Confusing/ badly-executed web layout? Check!
Dragons? Check.
Effects lamps? Check! Oh, look: they even have dragons on them, too. A lava-lamp with dragons on it. This is perfect for the basement, along with those black lights and rooms constructed of empty pizza boxes. Plus, now I can one-up my friend John who has a lava-lamp with the hulk dry-humping a tower of green slime.

Maybe we should take a closer look? No, that's not a good idea. Too late! You clicked!

Okay, it's purple. I have no problem with purple. I do, however, have a problem with the description of "Fiery fury"; I see no fire. That is false advertising. You know, I'm not even willing to continue.

Seriously though, who would purchase these things? These things are clutter! Bric-a-brac!

Oh, wait; I know: people who are excited for this movie.


I like to think that if I ever received any things like this (or, you know, dragons airbrushed onto a holographic or satin background, or any wolf-shirts or something), I would either start laughing or twitching—from either amusement or shock and loathing. It is hard to say whether it is from quality workmanship, ideals, or the fact that these sorts of things are clutter, that I am disgusted.

A lot of times, people ask me questions. Actually, people don't ask me questions because they're stupid, dull, and unobservant. I wish they did, so I pretend they do, and that they ask questions that are insightful and will tell them more about me as a person, psychologically.

I imagine being asked the question:

“Why do you wear that leather thing on your wrist?”

To which I would promptly reply:

“Wellp, fair friend, I'm glad that you asked, because I do have an answer for you, and it is actually two-fold in reply.

“First, I made the thing, with my own two hands. I cut the leather and dyed it, and then I wove it and I added a snap. It was a lot of fun to make, too.

“Second, it works very well. It feels odd to have on my left wrist the watch, and to not have anything on my right wrist. Especially when wearing tee-shirts (as I am rather wont to do), the lack of anything at the point of my arm where the hand and the lower arm join (the wrist, as I like to call it) seems to look odd and bare. The leather thing completes the wrist, and the dark dye compliments the bright industrial housing of the chronometer. In summary, my right arm looks weird without it.”

It’s interesting that, as one progresses in English, essays are less and less “structured” in the traditional sense, such that asking the question “how many pages” is not one that can be readily answered. At least not answered in any way but “as many pages as it takes.” The size and form of an essay matter less; the content and quality, more. It’s almost as if, by this time, it is assumed that one knows how to write the standard Five-Paragraph Essay™; even more so, it is almost as if one, knowing this basic form, now knows how to deviate from the established standard in the proper ways. Sure, one can write an essay without understanding the components of an essay, but the problem is that this then becomes hit-and-miss.

This is exactly like drawing things. One can draw cartoony characters, with their constitutions all skewed, but to draw them without understanding that there must be form beneath the flexible skin leads an artist to hit-and-miss drawings that don’t seem to work as well. Look at the masters of cartoons from the last century: while the characters were cartoons, and didn’t obey the proper laws of physics, the characters still had a basic form beneath their skin; a basic wireframe that allowed articulation and motion, however unreal; without this skellington, the characters would move in ways that the minds could not comprehend or relate to, and would be rejected.

This is why both drawing and writing start with the same basic principles: establish a form. In drawing, artists draw still-life and figures with realism, relating proportions and basic shapes to the forms of the solid objects they draw. In writing, authors write essays about solid objects and ideas, relating arguments and basic quotes, and structuring them rigidly into a five-paragraph essay. Both are rigid, un-yielding structures, and are carefully plotted out and executed with a conscious thought to form. As both practice their work, the form becomes ingrained such that the first thing an artist does is lay out the basic shapes of a form which detail can be added to; the first thing a writer does is lay out a series of thoughts on a topic which detail can be added to; this becomes a second nature for both.

Then, armed with this knowledge of form, an artist and writer can then “diverge” from the standard final form, though underlying structure is the same. A careful, thoughtful artist notices not just the outward layer and appearance, but the underlying form and structure as well. Someone haphazardly working can stumble upon a form like this with great success, but the mark of a true artist is the ability to re-create what happened, as it was no accident, but a purposeful, thoughtful, conscious decision.

The most interesting thing to note is that this essay does follow the conventional form: idea, supporting arguments, and conclusion. What more amazing, though is that it accomplished this while I was writing it. I had the ideas in my head of what to write, but these ideas also changed and evolved as I drew toward the conclusion as the argument its self grew stronger and more concise. In addition, the use of parallel structure was deliberate in the last two paragraphs, as a way to show that these two are really the same process, though the outcome is for the former, very specific, and the latter, quite abstract—thus is the nature of pictures and words.

Apparently, these two are also hard to reconcile, though they are, in fact, the same process, and indelibly linked. In addition, language and pictures sprang from the same representational nature, yet went in different directions. The have been reconciled in the medium of comics, though. Unfortunately, too few people (instead of the more negative “not enough people”) believe that comics can be art and literature; too many believe that comics are for children. It’s the same argument as being made for video games as art. I happen to believe in a rather broad definition of art, and am able to appreciate it regardless of whether I actually enjoy it. That’s not the real point of most art. Comics is art and literature, and the amalgamation of written and visual medias make for an even more immersive way of story-telling. The words enhance the visual stories, and the pictures make the worlds and action more physically real. It’s simply a more thorough way of telling a story, and it takes great skill. Not ability, but skill and though.

This Wednesday, I got a pair of Bluetooth-enabled Logitech headphones for the iPod.

Simply put, the headphones are simple and easy to use, though the sound quality is not nearly as good as wired headphones, though the bass frequency response is surprisingly excellent; the headphones are not cheap or tinny. However, there are to reasons what make these headphones wonderful: first, they are wireless ergo free of restrictive cords what catch on things whilst walking. Point the Second: they are a talking point, upon which I field such annoying queries as "Those headphones! They have no wires! Are they wireless?" though once past these, the conversation progresses.

A little heavier than normal headphones, these are not too heavy or bulky, and are also quite well-designed.

Full review after the jump.
( Logitech Bluetooth Headphones for iPod )


P.S.: The new Decemberists album, The Crane Wife, is amazing.

I think I have found what I want to get to replace the iPod, after the one I have dies. The Archos Jukebox 504. It's huge, and full of awesome. It's what the video iPod should be.

The only problem is with the protected AAC files I have, which would not play without stripping the DRM from the files.

However, the only concern at the moment is the increasing low charge times of the poor little Li-Ion (Lithium-ion, as found in all iPods, as well as most cellular telephones and laptops) battery, which can be replaced—by Apple for $60 for a new 550 mAh battery, or $25-30 from other places for a more powerful 850 mAh or 1100 mAh battery (these are the ratings of the power that the batteries can store; by comparison, my NiMh (Nickle Metal-Hydride) AA batteries for my camera claim to store 2300 mAh, but only last a few hours when I forget that my camera is still plugged-into my computer, attached as a USB drive). What with the new set of bluetooth headphones, and the fact that I know how to open the iPod, I think I would choose the latter, and hang on to my 3G iPod …


The other day, I was actually asked to go with Daniel and Catherine to California. I had to decline, because of both work-related constraints and class work. It's in two weeks, which is too short of notice. Plus, Bob would probably at least maim a few of us if we didn't come to the (rather redundant) media training sessions.


( The Grinch of Hallowe'en )

I totally missed the right time for this: my roommate just flew off to Cali on an aero-plane (I seem to recall the reason was something to do with Flogging Molly, and to see his dad). I think he also entertained the idea of going to a party down there, as well.


Anyway, a little background: Kip Hawley is the chief of the TSA. He is also an idiot. Apparently, it is also not okay to express this on your freedom baggy, the latter being a quart-sized (just smaller than a litre) ziploc bag, with the words "Kip Hawley is an Idiot" scrawled on it in large, black permanent marker.

The original Freedom Bag detained one Ryan Bird for 25 minutes in the TSA checkpoint (more like sobritiy or patriotism checkpoint -- in fact, that's what I'm going to call them from now on: patriotism checkpoints).

I think that this "war on moisture" perpetrated by the TSA is about as sucessful as the war in Iraq. Oh, and it's been proven that a binary bomb (one made from two reagents, or substances) -- the kind that are harmeless when seperate, but mean Certain Doom when combined -- it is not feasable; it belongs squarely to the realms of science-fictions and hollywood.

[via boingboing]